Unit 7: A Drawstring Bag

Sizing a Drawstring Bag Before You Cut

Why this project earns its place

A drawstring bag is two rectangles, four seams, and a folded channel at the top. That is the whole of it. Yet it asks you to cut square, sew a straight seam at a stated width, stop and start exactly where you meant to, press a fold you cannot see the inside of, and finish an edge that will be scrubbed in the wash for years. Every one of those skills carries straight over into a skirt or a shirt. The difference is that a crooked seam here costs you an hour and a yard of cheap duck cloth instead of a garment you hoped to wear.

There is a second reason. A house runs on bags. Shoes for a trip, laundry for a week away, dried beans, clothespins, a child's marbles, produce from the garden that ought not sit in plastic. Once you can make one in forty minutes you will make a dozen.

From finished size to cut size

Work backward from what the bag must hold. Decide the finished width and finished height first, then add what the construction eats.

Take a common useful size: a finished bag twelve inches wide and fifteen inches tall.

• Width. Add a half-inch seam allowance on each side. Twelve plus one equals a cut width of 13 inches. A half inch, not a quarter, is the working seam allowance for bags. A quarter inch is fine for a cotton blouse, but it does not have enough grip on heavier cloth and it leaves nothing to trim or finish.
• Height. Add a half inch at the bottom for the bottom seam, then add what the casing folds away. A casing made by turning under a quarter inch and then folding down another inch and a quarter uses 1 1/2 inches of height. So fifteen plus one-half plus one and one-half equals a cut height of 17 inches.

Cut two rectangles, each 13 by 17 inches.

If you would rather skip the bottom seam entirely, cut a single rectangle 13 inches wide by 33 inches long and fold it in half crosswise. The fold becomes the bottom. That is two times the sum of the finished height and the casing allowance, with no bottom seam allowance needed. A folded bottom is the strongest bottom there is, because there is nothing there to fail.

Cord length, decided now

Buy or cut cord before you begin so you are not stopped later. For a two-cord closure, which pulls shut evenly from both sides, each cord must travel the full way around the bag once and still leave you something to hold. Figure twice the finished width, plus twelve inches for the pull and the knot.

For our twelve-inch bag: twelve times two is twenty-four, plus twelve, gives 36 inches per cord, and you need two. Cut generously. A cord an inch too short is useless; an inch too long is trimmed in four seconds.

Write the pattern down

Moses was told to make the tabernacle furnishings after the pattern shown him in the mount, and the whole account presses the point that the pattern came first and the work followed it. That is not a small thing for a sewer. A pattern written on paper before the rotary cutter comes out is worth more than a clear memory of what you meant to do.

Keep an index card for every size you settle on. Write the finished dimensions, the cut dimensions, the seam allowance, the casing allowance, and the cord length. Tape it inside a cupboard door. The second bag then takes half the time of the first, and the fifth one you can cut while the coffee brews.

Three sizes worth having on that card

• Small, for gifts and small tools. Finished 8 by 10 inches; cut two pieces 9 by 12; cords 28 inches each.
• Medium, the everyday size. Finished 12 by 15; cut two pieces 13 by 17; cords 36 inches each.
• Large, for laundry or a sleeping bag. Finished 18 by 24; cut two pieces 19 by 26; cords 48 inches each.

Check the arithmetic once on paper. Every number above follows the same two rules: add one inch to the finished width, and add two inches to the finished height. Once you see that, you can size a bag for anything in the house without looking anything up.

Fabric, Thread, and Cord That Will Carry the Load

Start from the load, not the print

Proverbs speaks of the weights of the bag as belonging to the Lord, and honest weight is the picture Scripture keeps returning to. Here the phrase does a plain practical duty as well: ask first what this bag will carry. A bag for a bar of soap and a bag for twenty pounds of potatoes are not the same object, and no amount of pretty cotton will make the first one do the work of the second.

• Light duty — gifts, small tools, a hairbrush, a deck of cards. Quilting cotton is fine. It is about the weight of a good bedsheet, it presses beautifully, and it takes a crisp fold at the casing.
• Everyday duty — shoes, laundry, produce, a change of clothes. Cotton duck in the 7 to 10 ounce range is the right cloth. It is stiff off the bolt and softens with washing.
• Hard duty — firewood kindling, tools, a stack of library books, a bag that will be dragged. Canvas of 10 to 12 ounces. Under a heavy load — groceries, a stack of books, tools — anything lighter than 10 ounces will not hold up. Heavier than 12 ounces begins to fight a domestic machine, especially where four layers stack at a corner.

Avoid slippery synthetics for a first bag. They creep under the presser foot and refuse to hold a pressed fold.

If you have followed tote-bag instructions before, you may be waiting for the line about fusing medium-weight interfacing to every panel. There is none here on purpose. A structured tote is meant to stand up on its own and hold a square shape; a drawstring bag is meant to slump, gather, and fold away flat in a drawer, and interfacing fights all three. Let the cloth itself carry the load and choose a heavier cloth if the load is heavy.

Wash it before you cut it

Cotton shrinks, and it shrinks unevenly along the two grains. Wash and dry the yardage the way the finished bag will be washed, then press it flat. A bag that has been cut square from unwashed duck will come out of its first laundering with a bowed casing and a bottom that no longer sits level. Ten minutes of prewashing prevents an hour of regret.

Thread: polyester, and only polyester

Use polyester thread for anything that must carry weight. Cotton thread is lovely for hand quilting, but it has less give and it wears through at the stress points of a bag that gets loaded and dropped. Polyester stretches slightly under sudden load and returns, which is precisely what a seam full of books needs. An ordinary all-purpose polyester spool is enough for everything in this project.

If you want visible topstitching in a contrasting color, that is where a heavier thread earns its keep, and heavy thread demands a topstitch needle, which has a longer eye and a deeper groove down the shaft so the thread is not shredded as it passes. That is a refinement, not a requirement.

Needles, matched to the cloth

The needle is the cheapest part of the project and the one most often left wrong.

• 80/12 universal for quilting cotton and light duck.
• 90/14 denim or jeans needle for 7 to 10 ounce duck.
• 100/16 where several layers of canvas stack, such as a boxed corner on heavy cloth.

Putting a universal needle through canvas is the classic error. The point is not sharp enough to part a dense weave cleanly, so it deflects, and you get skipped stitches, a ticking sound, and eventually a snapped needle. Change to a new needle at the start of a bag and again if you hear the machine's note change.

Stitch settings

Set structural seams to 2.5 mm. That is long enough to feed heavy cloth smoothly and short enough to be strong. Shorten to 2.0 mm and the canvas bunches ahead of the foot and the seam puckers. For any topstitching you want to be seen, lengthen to 3.0 to 3.5 mm; a longer stitch reads as deliberate rather than accidental.

Cord

The casing you will build has roughly a one-inch channel, so almost anything reasonable will pass, but not everything behaves.

• Cotton twill tape, 1/2 inch wide — flat, soft on the hands, easy to knot, easy to sew a stopper into. The best all-around choice.
• Cotton cord, about 1/4 inch — traditional, comfortable, but the cut ends fray fast and cannot be melted.
• Nylon or polypropylene cord — very strong, and the ends can be sealed with brief heat. It is also slick, so knots must be tied firmly.
• Grosgrain ribbon — attractive and grips well because of its ribbed surface. Satin ribbon looks fine and then slides open all day; skip it.

Cut the cord an inch or two long and hold the ends closed with a clip until you finish them properly.

Cutting Square and True

Everything downstream depends on this

A bag sewn from crooked pieces cannot be rescued at the machine. If one side is a half inch longer than the other, the casing will not line up, the cords will sit at different heights, and the bottom will hang at a tilt no pressing can cure. The prophet's picture of the crooked made straight and the rough places plain is a promise about God's own work, not about ours; but the sewer who wants a bag to hang square has to do a smaller version of the same thing before the first seam.

Find the grain first

Woven cloth has three directions, and they behave differently.

• Lengthwise grain runs parallel to the selvage, the tightly finished edge along the side of the yardage. It has the least stretch of the three.
• Crosswise grain runs from selvage to selvage. It gives slightly.
• Bias runs at forty-five degrees to both. It stretches a great deal, which is useful for binding and disastrous for a bag panel.

Cut the bag's height along the lengthwise grain, so the direction that carries the weight is the direction that will not elongate. A bag cut carelessly on a strong diagonal will sag into a lopsided pouch after a month of use.

Square the cut end

Cloth is rolled onto the bolt and cut off at the store with a shrug, so the end you bring home is almost never square. Two reliable ways to correct it:

Pull a thread. Snip through the selvage about an inch from the end, pick up one single crosswise thread with a pin, and draw it gently. The cloth gathers along that thread and leaves a visible pale line across the full width. Cut along the line. That line is the true crosswise grain, and no ruler can find it more accurately.

Fold and true it. Fold the cloth selvage to selvage. If the fold lies flat and the cut ends stack evenly, the piece is square. If the corners fan apart, tug firmly on the two opposite corners that are short, on the bias, several times, and re-fold. This is called truing the grain, and a well-woven cotton will usually come right.

Once one end is square, measure everything from it.

Marking and cutting

Press the cloth first. You cannot cut accurate rectangles from wrinkled fabric; a wrinkle hides a quarter inch easily.

Use a long clear ruler and mark with tailor's chalk, a sliver of dry soap, or a fine washable marker on the wrong side. Mark the whole rectangle rather than measuring at the cutting edge as you go, and check the diagonals: on a true rectangle, corner to opposite corner measures the same both ways. If the two diagonals differ by more than an eighth of an inch, re-mark. That single check catches nearly every cutting error before it costs you anything.

Cut with either shears or a rotary cutter. Shears want the lower blade resting on the table and long, smooth strokes; the little snipping bites leave a scalloped edge. A rotary cutter wants a self-healing mat and a firm ruler.

Rotary cutter safety, plainly

A rotary blade is a scalpel on a wheel and it will open a finger to the bone without any drama at all. Three habits make it safe.

1. Close the guard the instant the cut ends. Every time, without exception, even to reach for a pin. Most rotary injuries happen to a blade that was set down open.
2. Cut away from your body, with the ruler between the blade and your fingers, and keep your holding hand's fingertips back from the ruler's edge, knuckles up.
3. Never leave it on a chair or a low table where a child or a cat will find it. If children are in the room, the cutter goes back in the drawer between cuts, not on the mat.

Change the blade when it starts skipping threads instead of cutting them. A dull blade requires pressure, and pressure is what makes the cutter slip.

Label the pieces

Cut the two body rectangles, then pin a scrap of paper to each marked with the top edge. On a plain cloth the top and bottom look identical until you have sewn the casing to the wrong end. Mark the wrong side too, if the fabric is printed on one face only. Two minutes of labeling saves the seam ripper.

Side and Bottom Seams, With Openings Left for the Cord

The order of operations

There is an order to this bag, and taking the steps out of order is what turns a forty-minute project into an evening with a seam ripper. Sew the side and bottom seams, leaving a planned gap near the top of each side. Then press. Then box the corners. Then fold and stitch the casing. The cord goes in last, when nothing else remains to be sewn. "Let all things be done decently and in order" is Paul's word about the assembly at worship, and it is not a sewing rule; but the mind that likes order in the greater thing will not despise it in the smaller.

Laying it out

Place the two rectangles right sides together, edges matched, and pin along both sides and the bottom. Pins go in perpendicular to the seam line, heads toward the raw edge, so they can be pulled with the left hand as the seam approaches. Do not sew over pins. A needle striking a pin can shatter, and a broken needle leaves at speed in an unpredictable direction. It is a two-second habit to pull each pin as you reach it.

Set the machine to a 2.5 mm straight stitch. Use the 1/2 inch guideline on the throat plate, or lay a strip of painter's tape on the bed at the half-inch mark and steer the fabric edge along it. A steady edge is what makes a straight seam; watching the needle does not.

The gap that makes the bag work

The cords must enter the casing from somewhere. The simplest, sturdiest way to arrange that is to stop each side seam short of the top.

On both sides, measure 2 inches down from the top raw edge and mark. Begin each side seam at the bottom corner and sew up to that mark, then backstitch three or four stitches and cut the threads. That last two inches of the side stays open. Sew the bottom seam right across, backstitching at both ends.

The two inches is not arbitrary. The casing will consume an inch and a half of the top when it is folded, so a two-inch gap leaves the whole channel open plus a small margin below it. Leave only one inch and the fold will close over your opening and you will be picking stitches out later.

Press before you go on

Press both side seams open over the point of the ironing board, all the way up through the unstitched two inches, so the seam allowances lie flat and mirrored on each side of the opening. Press the bottom seam open as well. Pressing is not tidiness here; it is what allows the next steps to lie flat and the cord to run without catching.

Tacking the opening flat

Those four little flaps of seam allowance above the stop point will flip and snag the cord forever if they are left loose. Secure them. From the right side or the wrong, whichever you can steer better, stitch a narrow rectangle around each opening: run a line of stitching about 1/8 inch from the folded edge, up one side of the opening, across the top raw edge, down the other side, and finish with a short horizontal bar just below the seam stop, closing the fourth side. Do not leave that bar off. The seam stop is the exact place a hard yank on the cord will try to tear, and the bar is what stands across the tear and holds. The closed rectangle also pins both allowances down permanently so nothing flips up into the channel.

What goes wrong here

• Wavy seams. You are watching the needle instead of the fabric edge against the guide. Look at the guide.
• The seam wanders wider near the top. Almost always a hand pushing or pulling the cloth. Let the feed dogs pull; guide, do not drive.
• Puckering on duck or canvas. Stitch length too short. Lengthen to 2.5 mm and try again on a scrap of the same layers.
• Skipped stitches. Wrong needle for the cloth, or a needle that has been in the machine too long. Change it.
• You forgot the gap and sewed the side to the top. Not fatal. Pick out the top two inches with a seam ripper, working from the inside, one stitch in three, then pulling the thread free.

A word on backstitching

Backstitch at the start and end of every seam in a bag, three or four stitches, no more. A long backstitched pile chews the cloth and shows. Those few reversed stitches are the difference between a seam that survives being stuffed with wet laundry and one that unravels from the end.

Seam Finishes That Survive the Wash

Why the inside matters

Turn a cheap bag inside out and you will see raw edges shedding threads into the laundry, and a seam allowance that has frayed back to within a few threads of the stitching line. That bag has maybe two years in it. Paul told Timothy to be a workman who has no need to be ashamed. The inside of your work is exactly where that idea bites, because it is the part nobody will inspect and the part that decides how long the thing lasts.

Choose a finish now, before the casing goes on, because two of the three options must be decided before the seams are even sewn.

Zigzag: the everyday answer

Set the machine to a zigzag of about 3 mm wide and 2.5 mm long. Sew down each raw edge of the seam allowance separately, with the right swing of the needle falling just off the cut edge so the thread wraps over it. Two passes, one per allowance, on each seam.

On heavy duck, you can instead press the allowances to one side and zigzag both together; it is faster and stiffer. On light cotton, finish them separately and press the seam open so it stays flat.

The common mistake is running the zigzag entirely on the fabric, an eighth of an inch in from the edge. That does nothing; the cloth simply frays up to the stitching and then keeps going. The needle must swing off the edge.

Pinking: quick, honest, limited

Pinking shears cut a zigzag edge. Because the little diagonal cuts run across the grain rather than along it, the cloth cannot unravel far. It is not a strong finish and it is not a pretty one, but on tightly woven duck it will hold up for years, and it takes ten seconds per edge. Trim about an eighth of an inch off the raw edge with the pinking shears after the seam is sewn. Do not use pinking on loose weaves or anything that already frays when you look at it.

The French seam: the best finish there is

A French seam encloses the raw edges completely inside a tube of fabric. There is nothing left to fray. It is the right finish for a light-cotton gift bag and for anything a child will handle, and it costs about four extra minutes.

It must be planned, because it is sewn in two passes that together consume the half-inch allowance:

1. Pin the pieces wrong sides together — yes, backwards from normal — and stitch at 1/4 inch.
2. Trim that allowance down to about 1/8 inch. Trim evenly; a stray whisker will poke through later.
3. Press the seam open, then fold the pieces right sides together along the stitched line and press again so the first seam sits exactly on the folded edge.
4. Stitch again at 1/4 inch from that fold. The raw edges are now sealed inside.

Turn it out and you have a clean tuck on the inside and a plain seam on the outside.

Two cautions. A French seam is bulky on canvas of 10 ounces or more, so keep it for lighter cloth. And it complicates the two-inch cord opening, since there is no seam allowance left to press open beside the gap; on a French-seamed bag, sew the side seams their full length and instead make buttonholes or bound openings in the casing. For a first bag, the simpler route is a plain seam with zigzag, and a French seam on the next one when the whole sequence is familiar.

Deciding by cloth

• Quilting cotton, light bag — French seam if you have the patience, zigzag otherwise.
• 7 to 10 ounce duck — zigzag both allowances separately, press open.
• 10 to 12 ounce canvas — zigzag the two allowances together, pressed to one side. Anything else is too thick.

Trimming and pressing at the end

One decision about the bottom corners depends on which bag you are making. If yours is a flat-bottomed bag with no boxed corners, trim each bottom corner diagonally, cutting to within about an eighth of an inch of the stitching but never through it; bulk in a corner is what makes a turned corner blunt and lumpy. If you are boxing the corners, leave them entirely alone — that corner point is cut away when the box is sewn, and there is nothing there to clip. Either way the bag stays inside out for now; turning comes at the very end. Press every seam again from the inside before the casing is folded. A pressed seam is a flat seam, and a flat seam takes a fold cleanly.

Work with the iron on its heel between passes, cord dressed away from the board's edge, and never leave it face down on the cloth while you go to answer the door.

Boxing the Bottom Corners for a Bag That Stands

What a boxed corner does

A flat bag sags into a shapeless envelope the moment anything round goes into it. A boxed corner converts the two bottom points into a flat rectangular base, so the bag has depth and will sit upright on a table with its mouth open. It costs two short seams and about five minutes.

The Lord's word to Israel about a just ephah and a just hin is a command about honest measuring in trade, and the reason it belongs here is simple: a boxed corner is nothing but measuring. Two corners measured the same give a bag that stands level. Two corners measured by eye give a bag that leans, and no one can fix it afterward.

Making the fold

Work with the bag still inside out, side and bottom seams sewn and pressed open.

Take one bottom corner and pull it apart so the side seam and the bottom seam come together and lie one directly on top of the other. The corner flattens into a triangle with the two seams stacked along its center line. Run your fingernail down the seams and feel that they are exactly aligned; if the seams cross rather than stack, the corner will be skewed. Pressing the seams open beforehand is what makes this alignment possible, because the allowances nest against each other instead of fighting.

Pin through both seams to hold the stack.

Measuring the depth

Decide the finished depth of the bottom. Three inches is right for a medium everyday bag; two inches for a small one; four for a laundry bag.

Lay a ruler across the triangle, perpendicular to the stacked seams, and slide it up or down until the measurement across the triangle from folded edge to folded edge equals your chosen depth. For a 3 inch depth, find the place where the triangle measures exactly 3 inches across. Draw a line there with chalk. The stacked seams should cross that line at its exact midpoint, 1 1/2 inches from each end. Check that. If the seam sits off center, your two seams are not stacked and you must re-fold.

Do the second corner the same way, and measure it rather than eyeballing it against the first. Corners that differ by even a half inch produce a bag that rocks.

Stitching and trimming

Stitch straight along the chalk line at 2.5 mm, backstitching at both ends. You are sewing through four layers plus the seam allowances at the center, so slow down as you cross the seams and let the machine do the work rather than pushing.

Trim the little triangle beyond the stitching to a 1/2 inch allowance, and finish that raw edge with a zigzag. Some sewers leave the triangle uncut and tack it against the bottom; on light cotton that is fine, and it adds a second layer where the bag takes the most abrasion. On heavy canvas, trim it, or the bulk will keep the bottom from lying flat.

The height change nobody warns you about

Boxing a corner shortens the bag. Roughly half the boxed depth comes off the finished height, because the cloth that becomes the base was previously part of the sides. A 3 inch boxed bottom takes about 1 1/2 inches off a bag's height.

If the finished height matters, add that back when you cut. For the medium bag with a 3 inch box, cut the rectangles 18 1/2 inches tall instead of 17. That single sentence is the difference between a bag that fits a ream of paper and one that almost does.

What goes wrong

• The bag leans. The two corners were different sizes. Pick out the shallower one and re-stitch it to match.
• The bottom will not lie flat. Either the triangles were left untrimmed on heavy cloth, or the stitching line was not perpendicular to the seams.
• The seams did not stack. They were pressed to one side rather than open. Press them open and try again.
• The machine stalls at the center. Four layers plus two seam allowances is a genuine stack. Use a 90/14 or 100/16 needle, walk the handwheel by hand through the thickest point, and keep your fingers well back from the needle while you do it.

Turn the bag right side out when both corners are done, push the corners out gently with a blunt tool such as a chopstick rather than scissors, and press the base flat.

Folding and Stitching the Drawstring Casing

What a casing is

A casing is a tunnel of cloth stitched along the top of the bag, with the cord running inside it. Pull the cord and the tunnel gathers; the mouth closes. Everything else in this project is ordinary sewing. The casing is the piece that makes it a drawstring bag, and it is worth taking slowly. James writes of letting patience have her perfect work, so that nothing is wanting. A casing that is wanting even a quarter inch of width will fight you at the threading step for the rest of the bag's life.

Work with the bag wrong side out.

The two folds

1. Turn the top raw edge down 1/4 inch to the wrong side, all the way around, and press hard. This narrow turn is what hides the raw edge inside the finished channel. On heavy canvas, this quarter inch is stubborn; press it in short sections and hold each with a clip.
2. Turn down again by 1 1/4 inches and press again. Pin or clip every three inches.

The result is a channel with the raw edge sealed inside and a finished width of about one inch once the stitching line is placed. One inch is generous for a 1/4 inch cord or a 1/2 inch twill tape, and generous is the point. A tight channel makes a bag that has to be wrestled shut.

Check as you fold that the two-inch side openings you left earlier fall entirely inside the channel, above the line you are about to stitch. If the fold covers part of an opening, you have folded too deep; measure again.

Stitching the channel

Stitch a straight line about 1/8 inch above the lower folded edge, all the way around the bag, at a stitch length of 2.5 to 3 mm. Start at a side seam and finish where you began, overlapping three or four stitches instead of backstitching so the join disappears.

Two things go wrong here and both are avoidable.

Catching the far side of the bag. With the bag wrong side out and flat, it is easy to stitch through all four layers and sew the bag shut. Keep the bag open and roll the far side away from the needle, or slip the bag over the free arm of the machine if yours converts. Look inside every few inches.

Missing the fold. If your stitching wanders off the folded edge, the channel is open at the bottom and the cord escapes. Guide by the fold, not by the needle. A quarter-inch presser foot or an edge-stitch foot makes this nearly automatic.

Add a second row of stitching about 1/8 inch below the top folded edge if you like the look. It is decorative rather than structural, and it does narrow the channel slightly, so only do it if your channel is a full inch.

Pressing without damage

Press cotton with steam and a hot iron; it takes crispness beautifully. If your fabric is a blend, or if you are pressing over a synthetic cord or ribbon later, drop the heat and use a press cloth — a scrap of plain cotton laid between the iron and the work. Synthetics can glaze, shine, or distort under an iron set for cotton, and once the surface is glazed it does not come back. Test on a scrap first; that is faster and more reliable than guessing at settings.

Keep the iron on its heel when you are not pressing, and keep the cord run behind the board rather than over the edge where a sleeve or a small hand can catch it.

Checking before you thread

Run a finger through each side opening and along the channel to be sure it is clear the whole way around. Hold the bag up to a window and look through the channel; light should travel. If a stitch has crossed the tunnel anywhere, find it now, pick out three or four stitches, and re-sew that inch. Finding it now costs a minute. Finding it with a bodkin jammed halfway costs your patience and possibly the cord.

Then turn the bag right side out, press the top edge flat, and admire a clean rolled top with no raw edge showing anywhere.

Threading the Cords with a Bodkin

Two cords, not one

A single cord threaded once around a casing will close the bag, but it pulls to one side and hangs unevenly. Two cords, entering from opposite openings, close the mouth squarely and give you a handle on each side. It is the standard for a reason, and it costs nothing but a second pass.

Here is the path. Take the first cord and thread it in at the left opening, all the way around the channel, and out the left opening again. Both of its ends now hang from the left side. Take the second cord and thread it in at the right opening, all the way around, and out the right opening. Now pull both pairs of ends outward at once and the bag draws shut evenly.

If both cords end up on the same side, the bag will not close properly. Thread the second one from the opposite opening.

The tool

A bodkin is a small blunt tool with an eye or a gripping jaw at one end, made for exactly this. Its virtue is length: because it is rigid and several inches long, it bridges the seam allowances and folds inside the channel instead of burrowing under them and stopping dead. Zechariah asks who has despised the day of small things, and a bodkin is a small thing indeed — a couple of dollars, a couple of inches — that saves more frustration per ounce than any tool on the table.

Thread the cord through the bodkin's eye and secure it. On a flat twill tape, fold the end over and push the bodkin through, or run a couple of hand stitches to hold it. On a round cord, tie it.

If you have no bodkin, pin a large safety pin through the cord end and use that. It works. It is slower, it catches more often, and on a heavy twill tape it may not hold, but it has threaded a great many casings.

The motion

Do not try to push the tool the whole way through. The right motion is a caterpillar:

1. Push the bodkin forward as far as it goes comfortably.
2. Hold it through the cloth with one hand.
3. With the other hand, scrunch the fabric back along the tool, gathering the channel onto the bodkin's shaft.
4. Slide the fabric forward off the tip, and push the bodkin ahead again.

Work in a rhythm and a medium bag takes under a minute. Fighting it in one long shove is what makes people give up.

Hold the tail

The single most common failure in this whole project is letting go of the trailing end and watching it vanish into the channel. Before you start, pin the tail end of the cord to the outside of the bag with a safety pin, or clip it to the fabric with a hair clip. Then it cannot follow the bodkin in. If it does disappear, do not panic and do not pull the bag apart. Feel for the lump through the cloth, work it back toward the opening with your fingers, and coax it out.

Straightening and testing

Once both cords are through, run them between your fingers along the whole channel to remove any twist. A cord that has rolled over on itself inside the casing will catch every time the bag is opened.

Pull both pairs of ends. The mouth should gather evenly into soft, even folds all the way around. If one side gathers and the other stays flat, one cord has gone only partway around, or both are entering from the same opening. Pull it back out and re-thread; it is a two-minute fix now and a permanent annoyance later.

Then even the ends: hold the bag closed, pull each cord until its two ends are the same length, and check that the loops on each side match. Trim only after this check, and trim both cords to the same length so they hang alike.

Leave the ends untrimmed and unfinished for now. The next step decides how they are finished, and it is easier to knot, whip, or seal an end that still has an inch of slack.

Cord Ends That Will Not Fray, and Cords That Are Safe

The end is the weak point

A cut cord end starts shedding on the first day. Within a month a cotton cord has unraveled two inches into a fuzzy tassel, and unraveled cord will not pass back through a casing when the bag needs washing. Finishing the ends takes five minutes and doubles the useful life of the bag.

Choose the method by fiber, because the fibers behave differently.

Knots: the simplest good answer

Tie a plain overhand knot about a half inch from each end. On thicker cord a figure-eight knot is bulkier and holds better. The knot has two jobs at once: it stops the cord from pulling back through the casing, and it stops fraying at the point where it matters, because the loose fibers beyond the knot cannot travel past it.

This is the right choice for most household bags. It requires nothing you do not already have.

Whipping: the traditional finish for cotton

Cotton cord cannot be heat sealed. It chars and blackens and then frays anyway. Whip it instead, the way rope has been finished for centuries.

Take about eighteen inches of strong polyester thread. Lay a loop of the thread along the cord with the loop pointing toward the cord's end. Wrap the working end of the thread tightly around both cord and loop, working toward the tip, for about a half inch of tight, touching turns. Then pass the working end through the loop, and pull the other tail hard; the loop drags the working end back under the wrapping and locks it. Trim both tails flush. Done well, this is neater than any plastic tip and it will outlast the bag.

A quicker version: wrap the end tightly with a few turns of thread and secure with several hand stitches straight through the cord.

Heat sealing: synthetic cord only

Nylon and polypropylene cords melt cleanly and fuse. Cotton, linen, and rayon do not; do not try it on them.

If you seal a synthetic cord, do it deliberately and safely. Work near an open window or with a fan running. Touch the flame to the cord end for a moment only, just until the fibers draw together, and take the flame away. Never hold a flame under a cord until it drips. Molten synthetic sticks to skin and keeps burning, so never touch the end with your fingers to shape it; let it cool completely, or press it flat with the back of a metal spoon. Do not lean over the work and breathe the smoke. Better still, use heat-shrink tubing over the end with a heat gun, which gives a tidy tip and no open flame; let the tubing cool fully before handling.

Cordstops

A cordstop, or aglet, is a small barrel with a spring-loaded button; press it, slide it, release, and the cord is held wherever you left it. It turns the bag into an adjustable one and is pleasant to use. Slide it onto both cords on one side and knot below it so it cannot come off. Anything a small child might mouth should be knotted, not fitted with a small removable part.

The safety that actually matters

Deuteronomy commands that a man building a new house put a battlement, a low parapet, around the flat roof where the family will sit, so that no one falls and blood comes on the household. It is a law about building safety into the thing while you build it, not warning people about it afterward. That is the standard for a drawstring, too.

Long cords and small children do not belong together. A drawstring on a bag hanging within reach of a crawling child is a loop, and a loop is a hazard around a neck. Two plain rules keep this simple:

• Keep the drawstring short. Long enough to grip and knot, no more. The lengths given earlier already allow this.
• Never put a drawstring at the neck or hood of a child's garment. Use buttons, elastic, or a sewn tie. This is a well-established hazard, and it is one of the few places in sewing where the traditional method has rightly been abandoned.

Hang finished bags on a hook high enough that the cords are out of a toddler's reach, and keep loose cord off the sewing room floor where it becomes something to trip on or tangle in.

Final Inspection, and a Bag Worth Giving Away

Inspect before you are pleased with it

Give the finished bag five honest minutes before you decide it is done. Look at it as though someone else had made it and had asked you to be truthful.

Run down this list.

1. Both cords pull evenly. Hold the bag by the base and pull both pairs of ends. The mouth should gather all the way around into even folds, not gape on one side.
2. The cords are the same length. Lay them side by side. Trim the longer to match and refinish the trimmed end.
3. The two boxed corners match. Set the bag on a table. It should sit level and hold its mouth open. A lean means one corner is deeper than the other; that seam can be picked out and restitched.
4. The casing is clear. No stray line of stitching crosses the channel, and the two side openings are tacked flat so the cord cannot snag.
5. The seams are finished. Turn it inside out and look. Raw edges should be zigzagged, pinked, or enclosed. Any place a thread is already shedding will only get worse.
6. The top edge is level. Sight along it. A dipping casing usually means the top was cut off-square, which is a cutting problem, not a sewing one, and worth noting for next time.

Then press the whole bag: seams from the inside, the base flat, the top edge crisp, the body smooth. Pressing is the difference between homemade and handmade, and it is the cheapest improvement available to any sewer.

Repairs, honestly considered

If something is wrong, decide whether to fix it or to let it stand. A bag that will hold clothespins on a line does not need a perfect casing. A bag going to a bride does. Both answers are legitimate; the wrong answer is to pretend you did not notice.

Two fixes are always worth doing: a seam that skipped stitches, and a cord opening that snags. Both will fail in use, and both take three minutes now.

Variations, once the sequence is yours

You now know a sequence that scales in every direction.

• Produce bags. Cut from lightweight cotton or an open mesh, make them small, and keep a stack in the car.
• Shoe bags for travel. Medium size, heavy duck, a boxed bottom, and a name written on the inside seam allowance in permanent marker.
• A lined bag. Make a second bag from lighter cloth an eighth of an inch smaller, drop it inside wrong sides together, and treat the two as one layer when you fold the casing.
• A contrast casing. Cut a separate strip of a different cloth, four inches wide and long enough to circle the bag, and sew it on as a band rather than folding the bag's own top down.
• A flat-bottomed sack for dry goods. Heavy canvas, a four-inch box, a French-seamed interior for anything that touches food.
• Gift bags. A stack of small ones in plain cotton, used year after year, ends the annual cost and waste of wrapping paper entirely.

The reason to make ten of them

Hebrews says that God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love shown toward his name in ministering to the saints. That is written about ordinary service among ordinary believers, and it takes in the woman who sews for people who need things sewn.

A drawstring bag is a small, useful, unglamorous object. It is the sort of thing that goes to a new mother with a loaf of bread in it, or to a widow with her medicines organized in it, or to a family whose house burned with a change of clothes for a child inside. Nobody will praise it. It is not meant to be praised. It is meant to be used until it wears out, and then remembered vaguely as a kindness.

That is a good use for forty minutes and a yard of cloth. Make one for your own house so you know how, and then make the next several for someone else. The skill is now yours; the bags do not have to be.